Tuesday, September 07, 2010

There are different ways to be happy. I like to classify them in two ways:Fun and Satisfaction

Fun is truly a roller coaster. It seems that for every up fun gives you there is a down. You have a party... you have to clean up when everybody goes home. Summer fun... fades to autumn.

Satisfaction comes from a job well done, a life well lived, and friends to share it with. It comes from a life full of purpose and accomplishment.

The world tells us that we evolved, and as such, the only time we have is now. This begets a life of 'fun', trying to get all you can while you can.

This is sad, since a life of satisfaction can be so much fuller. Many people have been discouraged by things such as religion when they see the hypocrisy that is so prevalent. And they're right to be upset. Most religions preach traditions that have no factual basis, and drift over time, offering no lasting foundation.

So, if satisfaction is so much better, how can we find it?It may be time to look a little deeper into a subject many find uncomfortable:Does the Universe Have a Purpose?

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

First, I've added a Facebook badge to this blog. (It's over there on the left with my picture.) For those of you that use Facebook, you can friend me. If you don't use Facebook, no rush... don't worry about it.

What's been happening? Well, we moved. Bought a house. Started getting it settled. Spring is coming, and so is yard work. It's about time, we're eager to get out in the fresh air after a winter of 'nesting'.

For the technical...My linux server, running on an 800MHz CPU was finally dying. It seems that one-by-one all of my systems have been crashing lately. It's fine, it's good to start fresh again. I had another box somebody was getting rid of, with a faster AMD processor, and put the newest version of Ubuntu on it. It's already running.

But I moved my site, http://www.greatwhitedata.com/ to my Windows server for the time being. I'm running WAMP (Windows Apache mySql PHP) on it. Wow! It was actually pretty easy, just copy the site folder over and set up the virtual server in Apache.

Well, we certainly have had a lot going on, namely, we bought a house. Hadn't really been planning on it, but we saw it, we went for a showing, and the price was right, really really right.

Once we signed the paperwork... (some poor tree gave it's life for all that paperwork) we had work to do.

First paint... since we were going to pull out the carpets... we started with paint.

Then the carport roof needed to be redone. We started out just doing the roofing, but when we got underneath, and saw how bad the wood was, we had to replace that too.

Then we went back inside. We had to take the carpet out of the main floor... bedrooms, living room, bathroom, dining room. Underneath are hardwood floors. (Except for dining room and bathroom.) These had stains that needed to be sanded out... this turned into a 4 day project... with follow-up coats of polyurethane.

After that was move in day. We had been taking boxes and small items, so all that was left were the larger pieces of furniture. With our 26' truck, we loaded up! 2 hours to load, and 1 to unload. It's great to have a plan and be organized.

The kitchen/dining room and bathroom still need the vinyl flooring put down, but most of the rooms are functional. Then we have to go to the basement and organize all the boxes and piles of stuff that have been deposited there.

Here and there I'll work on moving the stones from around the house to the driveway area to extend that for the trailer.

In the spring we can open up the pool!!!

So, that's what we've been up to. How about you?

For pictures, you can check out my FaceBook page. Yes... I have a Facebook account... it's an easy way to keep in touch with much of my family and several out of state friends. And a good spot for pics.http://www.facebook.com/mark.kenyon2?ref=name

Monday, July 20, 2009

After last year's camping adventure (see here) we weren't sure camping was in our future. But then we found a deal, on a 2000 Coleman Santa Fe popup camper.

So, this past weekend we took it down to Pine Grove Furnace state park in PA.

So it's July in PA, and the weather was nice. But it got cold at night. I'll give you the highlights, and the funny bits.

I got out of work early Friday. The PUP (PopUP) had been loaded earlier in the week, but we had to load the food, clothes, and doggie into the SUV and hitch up.

The DW (Dear Wife) had gotten most of the gear out on the back porch, out of the rain, but real easy to load into the TV. Took a little longer, I think I was slow cause of the rain, but we got it all loaded. Then I put the bike rack on the back, and loaded the bikes. Nothing left to do but hitch up the PUP.

(Funny bit) I usually store the ball hitch and pin in the storage under the trunk of the SUV. Guess where it was at this point?!?! Yup, safe and sound, under all our gear.

I quickly pulled off the bikes (leaving the rack), and pulled out just enough gear so I could lift the floor of the trunk and get the hitch. (I keep it in a bag with the pin so it doesn't grease up anything.) Less than 10 minutes to fix, thankfully, and we were ready to hitch.

I found out the DW is very good at getting me lined up to hitch up.

So, it's wet, I'm soaked, but we're loaded and ready to go. A quick change out of my soaking jeans, and we're on the road.

The rain was lightening up, but I'd never towed this trailer while loaded with all the gear before. I was pretty nervous at every bump, and any time we kicked up a rock I was sure the PUP was falling off the hitch, but everything was fine. (Triple checking is so important.)

By the time we pull into the CG, the clouds are parting, and we've got a bit of sun. We pull around the loop, and my wife says, 'Is that the Parker's camper?' Sure enough, right behind our site, was the camper of some friends of ours. They had heard where we were camping, and decided to check it out too.

I was very careful backing into the site, and with DW's help (she's good at this part too) I got lined up nice and straight on the first try.

(Funny bit) So, it's July, and we're in shorts. We set up in about an hour, and go to chat w/ the friends. We turn in early, since it's getting a bit chilly. And proceed to wake up about every hour as the temp drops about 5 degrees an hour. (I'm guessing. I have to put a thermometer on our gear list.) Musta been in the 50s!!! We had one blanket on the bed, and no sweat shirts packed!!!

We managed to make due, we dug out some throw blankets, and the DW bundled in her jacket and 2 sets of socks the next night. (It was cold then too.)

Our packing up routine needs a little work, but I didn't worry a bit about the PUP on the way home, it handle's great. We even saw another Hyundai Santa Fe pulling a Coleman like ours with bikes in our CG, so I knew our rig would be fine too.

I realized too, that this was my first time ever camping in a trailer!!! And only our fourth camping trip in our 7 years of marriage. But we're planning on more trips.

(We'll definitely stock a space heater and blanketS before any October trip!!!)